Only two months after the US can-spam act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing), Microsoft, AOL, Earthlink and Yahoo have taken legal action against at least a hundred of the individuals that have been clogging up your inbox with all those offers of loans, cheap medicines and naked men, women and livestock.
The can-spam act made many of the spammers techniques illegal – such as sending bulk email by the misuse of open proxies (basically a relay for sending mail), using false email addresses and false unsubscribe options.
The plaintiffs aren’t entirely sure who they are prosecuting – many of the defendants are as yet unnamed, but they’re confident they’ll know who they are by the time the cases get to court.
This is a tiny, tiny step in the progress towards reducing the amount of spam that is sent worldwide every day. This legal action from MS et al will do little to stop the vast tidal wave of spam from around the world – only when changes are made to email software and mail transmission can we look forward to seeing any reduction.